Brakes Himiway step thru hydraulic brakes and small width tires?

[zerpda]

Hi so I just bought a used 2020 himiway step thru and am looking for help with some upgrades. I would like to upgrade to hydraulic brakes and I need help on new tires. I know current tire size is 26x4. What is the smallest size tire I can get on that rim? Any suggestions? Thanks for any help. Any other suggestions?

 

[Anton]

You can upgrade your brakes to a "hybrid" hydraulic system. Basically you swap the mechanical brake calipers with hydraulic brake calipers. That way you can still use the existing cable runs, cable levers and brake sensors. The hydraulic brake calipers have fluid inside them and 2 pistons so technically you should achieve more stopping power. It's a cheap and quick solution.

Amazon.com

Here's a video about it:

You can put smaller width tires on your rims to a certain extent. @biknut managed to put 2.5" wide tires on an ebike that came with 4.9" wide tires without any issues: https://ebikesforum.com/threads/ebike-with-interchangeable-tires-fat-and-regular.2563/post-21607

 

[biknut]

These are 26x 2.5 tires mounted on 80mm rims. The tires are Maxxis Hook Worms

 

[neutron]

Will the work on 180mm discs? Everything I see says 160mm.

 

[m@Robertson]

Will the work on 180mm discs? Everything I see says 160mm.

If you change disc sizes, you then change caliper adapters to account for the different rotor diameter.

If you have 180mm discs already, then all you do is replace the existing calipers with your chosen upgrade. Calipers are agnostic to rotor diameter so they will work fine with anything.

 

[neutron]

Thanks! I see some on Amazon that I'm considering. They are the catazer MTB XTECH HB 100 MTB. I want to put them on my KBO Breeze. I'm tired of the existing squeaky brakes. Do you think these will work okay?

 

[m@Robertson]

One thing I would never do is cheap out with cheap brakes. Especially hydraulic brakes that have to deal with fluid under hi pressure (and not start leaking). If I went this cable/hydro hybrid route, I would do Juin Tech M1's. In fact I already did for my daughter and son-in-law who had hi powered fat bikes that suffered from the usual cable-stretching that happens with big, fast ebikes. They were very well made.

At $170 for two of them, they are also four times the cost of the Catazer and similar brakes.

However, the guy I bought my Juin Techs from has them on sale for $113 for a set.

Juintech M1 hydraulic calipers! Front and Rear

area13ebikes.com

Read the Catazer 1-star reviews. Seems like a fairly consistent problem of the fluid seals not lasting.